Final film opening

In this blog post I uploaded our final film opening.

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

 

The nine best shots from our film opening.

 Title of The Film:

The title of our film is “Because of them”. We chose this title to emphases the point that the character Charlotte Woods got the sort of life she did because of the women fighting to get the right to vote.

Setting;

We used one main location, Oaklands museum, as it had the feeling of an early 20^th century house that could still be in use today.  We use this setting to create a connection between the different characters and so that the audience are more interested.

Our Titles

Our titles are in the font Andulas. We also kept them white and not moving. We did this to create regularity between all the titles. We also created them in a white font and not moving due to the fact- in films we looked at, like Jane Eyre, the titles were plain. We decided to do this also to keep in line with the genre and to not take anything away from our film opening.

Genre
Our genre is period drama with scenes from the 21st century. We were also looking at films with strong female leads and how they represented them to use power. This included looking at camera angles and where they where in the shot. A period drama is a film set in a historical time period, which is shown with costume and set. However, we also have a modern part with Charlotte Wood being in the 21st century.

Challenges to common stereotypes:

We use strong female leads which especially for a 20^th century women is against the stereotype of the role of women. We also had a man as an assistant as stereotypically men are higher up than women so having a female boss with a male assistant is challenging the stereotype of a 21^st century office life.
We didn't show any men in beginning in our film to highlight the importance of women. This meant we draw our audience to the women and their story.

Camera Work and Editing;
We used a Sony Handy-cam to film all our shots. We also used tripods to stabilised the shots. We filmed at different angles and heights to create the best film opening.

For editing we put all the shots in order then added the effect onto Lorna’s shots to create the older scenes. We then added the titles. Finally we added non-diegetic sound to pull our film together.

Story/Narrative:

Our story is about a young successful business women called Charlotte Wood  whose forgotten about the importance to vote until 1 day she is cleaning out her attic and found a picture of her great great grandmother Alice Greenburg a suffragette.
To portray our story we used Levi- Strauss' theory of binary opposites. We used as went Alice Greenburg was being shown we had it in black and white. Where as Charlotte Wood's scenes were all in colour to show a clear contrast of characters and time. We also had each scene being performed in each different period. An example of this is when Alice and her friend where walking we then had a scene with Charlotte on the phone.

Characters:

Alice Greenburg: 23 years old, suffragette, wife, mother, has little say in the community.

Charles Greenburg: Hard head business man, husband, believes his wife should accept her role in                                        society.

Charlotte Wood: Hard head business women, great great granddaughter of Charles and Alice                                           Greenburg, Single, does not believe she has to vote.

Mark Hughes: Charlotte’s personal assistant, works hard to please her, his work is not really                                         appreciated.

Costumes;

To create the 20^th century costume they wore skirts with tights and black shoes. They also wore white shirts and coats with fancy headbands. This was to recreate the clothes of the era.

For Charlotte’s outfit she had to look serious. This means that she wore black trousers and a shirt and black heels. This was to make her look more like a modern day business women. She also wore a faux leather jacket to make the outfit look sleek and modern.

Themes:

Our theme was women empowerment and highlighting the importance to vote. We chose these films as we believe that these are issues that need to be highlighted. Especially, with voting as a lot of young people seem to forget the importance to vote and how hard some people fought to get this right. We also where looking at these themes as at the time of filming this the USA 2016 election where happening so we saw issues around voting. Also as a group we where passionate about equal rights for women so we found this as a common ground went we first where put as a group,  

Films that inspired our film
Suffragettes- Due to common themes.
Legally blonde- Due to the strong female lead.
Jane Eyre-Due to it being a period drama.
King's speech- Due to being a period drama and political theme.

Question 2 How does your media product represent particular social groups.

Question 3:What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Question 4 Who is the audience for our media Production?

Audience survey from Charlotte Revell

Question 5: How did you attract/ address your audience.

Question 6- What have learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Question 7

Group photos

Here are the group photos we took during all stages of making our film opening.

Group pictures from Charlotte Revell

Because of them Facebook page

We have created a Facebook page to help with the marketing of our film and to make it more accessible to our target audience.

The link to our Facebook page is here: https://www.facebook.com/becauseofthemfilm/

On our Facebook page we have included our film poster and a link to the opening of our film on YouTube.

Production Diary

Monday 7th November

Today we were told who was going to be in our groups and were briefed on what our task was going to be. Our group included - Leah Harte, Lorna George, Jess Burdon and Charlotte Revell. 

Tuesday 8th November

Today we exchanged ideas on our genre and plot. We came up with several ideas and then developed our favourites. 
One idea was a woman in the 1900s, who is a suffragette, and a woman in 2016. The girl in 2016 is the great great granddaughter of the woman in the 1900s. The woman in 2016 does not appreciate the rights that she has today until she comes across a photograph of her great great grandparent and has a visions/flashbacks of what her ancestor went through in order to get her the rights that she has today.

Another idea was a family film about a teenager that goes to an arcade and ends up getting 'sucked' into an arcade game. They then have to try to get out of the machine during the rest of the film. 

We also thought of doing a crime drama where a woman finds a dead body down an alleyway and telephones the police. The film then follows the police investigation. 

Our final idea was another period drama where a teenage girl gets pregnant and is thrown out by her parents. She and her friends must travel far away to a place where they are not known by anyone to raise the baby. 

Wednesday 9th November

We decided to use the suffragette idea because it was the one that we though was the most doable and interesting. It is also the idea that we had developed the most at this point. 
We then began to get our ideas together and build a presentation on Microsoft PowerPoint that would become our film pitch to the rest of the class so that we can get their feedback on our ideas. 
We began to think of the practicalities of our idea first- where the best location would be for us to shoot the scenes and what would need to be organised in order to get everything done. Most of our time was spent working on our presentation.

Thursday 10th November

Today we worked on our presentation. We finished writing all of the slides and then proofread the slides to ensure that there were no spelling or grammatical errors. We then decided to upload our presentation from Microsoft PowerPoint onto Emaze to make it more interesting. 

Friday 11th November

We proofread our presentation again to double check that we had not previously missed any errors that were made. We then presented our film pitch to the class and received written feedback on various aspects of our film idea.

Monday 14th November

Today we uploaded our film pitch to our blog and sorted through the feedback that we received from our peers, uploading this onto our blogs also. We then discussed what we thought of the feedback we received and made changes to our ideas accordingly. We also took some time to develop our ideas further where some people said that things were not clear. 

Tuesday 15th November

Today Lorna called Chelmsford Museum to try to arrange a date for us to film in their museum. We also began to make our shot list which includes all of the different shots that we are planning to include in our film opening.

Wednesday 16th November

Today we continued to make our shot list. We also began to transfer information from our shot list onto our storyboard. We decided to make our storyboard out of post-it notes so that we can rearrange the order of our shots or remove them if we change our mind about something or have a better idea. 
We also began to make a prop and costume list so that we can begin to gather the items that we will need for our opening. We realised that this would need to be done soon because we would need to ensure that we are able to get hold of all of the props we will need so that we still have time to purchase them if we need to.

Thursday 17th November

In this lesson we finished the storyboard and shot list. This meant that we transferred our ideas from post notes to our story board. Leah then recorded a voice over to explain what happened in our storyboard. For the shot list Charlotte went through the storyboard and wrote out the shots needed at each location. This meant we had shots for Oakland Museum, Train station and Charlotte's House.

Monday 21st November

We started the risk assessment and did the character representation. This meant that we looked at the different characters and what sort of personality each character should portray. 

Tuesday 22nd November

Today we did Institution. This means that we looked into different companies that would produced our sort of film and that weren't too big. As a group we came  Film 4 as they help with a lot of smaller films however did produce films like 12 years a slave and Suffragettes. 

Wednesday 23rd November

Today we started the marketing campaign and finished it all apart from our poster. This meant that we looked at how we would advertise our film . This meant that we looked at social media and how we could use that to showcase our film. We then also looked at more traditional methods of advertising our film like buses and newspapers/ magazines. 

Thursday 24th November

 Today we went to Charlotte's house and filmed some of the 2016 women. We went in Charlotte's House and went into her attic. Lorna filmed in the attic and Leah filmed Charlotte coming down the stairs. We then went into her room and filmed Charlotte in her chair at multiple different angles to make sure we had a choice when we edited the scenes in.

Friday 25th November

Today we looked at film titles and decided font and the title because of them. To decide what film title we looked at films like Jane Eyre and the Suffragette. We decided on  Andalus we chose this because it looked like the font of old fashion film which is what we wanted.

Saturday 26th November

Today we filmed at Chelmsford train station and Oakland museum. Today Leah and Charlotte filmed at Chelmsford train station the one shot they needed. Leah's Mum then drove Leah and Charlotte to Oakland's museum where Lorna joined them. They first filmed Charlotte outside shot first. Leah then filmed the inside shots for Charlotte then Lorna. We then went back outside and Charlotte filmed Leah and Lorna outside the museum.

Monday 28th November

Today we started editing and found are film logos off you tube. Charlotte and Lorna started to decide which clips to use in the film open. Leah looked on you tube for a film 4 logo and got it off you tube and gave us the clip it import into the beginning of film opening. Lorna also gave us our film opening the solar production.

Tuesday 29th November

Today we continued to edited and added film logos and music. Today we started to look at the timings for and what order the film clips would go in and what transitions would work with our film genre.

Wednesday 30th November 

Leah and Charlotte carried on trying to order the film clips and decided film transition. Lorna worked on the production diary by adding detail to the first part of our production diary.Thursday 1st December
We continued to edited and discussed key ideas in the group to make sure it had all our influence in it.

Friday 2nd December

Today Leah and Charlotte filmed the office shot in a classroom in Great Baddow High School. We also researched what music we could use in are film opening. We had the problem of trying to find non-copied righted music.

Monday 5th December

Lorna and Charlotte added non-diagetic music. Leah researched different film posters so we could make our film posters as good and close to our film genre as possible.

Tuesday 6th December

Today we watched the first drafts of the classes film openings and wrote down feedback.

Wednesday 7th December

Today Charlotte wrote up are the classes feedback about the film opening. Lorna worked on our film posters.

Thursday 8th December

We edited are titles by changing the colour to black. We also changed the size of our titles. We then also created all the titles and added whole of the crew to the film opening. Lorna continued to work on the 2 film posters.

Friday 9th December

Charlotte continued to edit. Today she looked at the sound and how that could be improved. Leah also look for sounds of protesting for votes for women. This mean that she went onto you tube Lorna finished film posters

Monday 12th December

We added our sound of the women protesting for rights we also changed are titles to make them clearer.

Tuesday 13th December

In this lesson we updated are blogs. Leah also wrote the blog post about what age rating will be and she started our website. Lorna continued to edit. Charlotte updated the production diary and recorded a voice over.

Wednesday 14th December

Today Lorna and Charlotte continued to edited we move are film title from the end to into the film opening more. Leah worked on the location shots and continued to work on the website.

Thursday 15th December

Today Lorna worked on charging the titles so they are easier to see Leah continued to work on the website. Charlotte worked on the production diary so that the detail so each day was there.

Monday 19th December

Today Leah finished our website. Lorna finished editing our film opening and put it on you tube.
Charlotte  finished the production diary and spell checked her blog.

Because of them website

This is the website that we designed for marketing our film. It includes lots of information about the film and also includes connections to our film opening and social media sites.

Our Web Address -  http://hartounnoushiansl1.wixsite.com/becauseofthem

Institution

Here is are research about institutions

Because of them- Age Certificate

Here we have discussed why we have given our film the Age Certificate of 12.


Our film will include discrimination against women however it will be clear that this is wrong and the main character will be fighting against this discrimination. We will also include some mild violence but most of it will be implied only. There will be no gory details in regards to violence. There will  be some moderately disturbing scenes but the film as a whole will not have this tone. There will be no use of drugs or strong language; there will be moderate language only. There will be no sex scenes and sexual acts will be implied only.

Our film would not be able to have the certificate: Parental Guidance (PG) because it includes discriminatory behaviour towards women and there will be some intense threatening scenes for the characters which could be difficult for children to watch. There will also be moderate language which will not be suitable for children.

Our film would not be a 15 certificate because it does not include the use of drugs, strong sex scenes or strong language. Dangerous scenes will not be in  a great amount of detail and very frightening and intense scenes will not be long or frequent. The violence in our film will also be moderate only and not strong.

Film poster research

Here is our film poster research.

Film Poster Research from Leah Harte

Our first draft of our film opening

In this blog we uploaded our first draft of our film opening.

Final film titles

Production company-
Film4 
Solar Productions 

Charlotte Revell

Lorna George 

Because of them

Leah Harte

Jude Pettyfer

Casting by

John Ranch

 

Produced by

Ben Home

Music by

Gavin Luke

Edited by

Roger Brown

Produced by

Emily Hall

Director of photography

John Deadwood

Written by

William Field

Directed by

Todd Haynes

Film posters

These are the film posters for 'Because of them' these will be used to promote the film.

Location Shots

Chelmsford Museum Interior (Downstairs Interior)

 We used the museum as our main location because we thought that we could use aspects of it in a modern way but also emphasise the more historical features for the scenes set in the past.

Chelmsford Museum (Exterior of House)

The exterior of the museum gave us a paved road to walk on and some green fields. This was perfect for all of the shots that we needed to film outside.

Student's House (Attic, Hallway and Charlotte's Bedroom)

We needed to use someone's house so that we could sit on a chair in a bedroom and use a loft. We wanted the bedroom to be more modern because we believed that a person in their twenties in the present day would not want a very old fashioned bedroom, even if their house is very old.

Classroom (Office)

We decided to use a classroom for the office because we needed a computer for Charlotte to type on and the classroom provided a desktop computer. The desk was also very plain and wooden, like you would see in an office and the room provided good lighting to film in.

What we are going to do going forward to improve our film.

On this post we looking at how we are going to go forward to improve our film opening.

• Sort the volume of the sound.
• Add speech.
• Sort the titles out.
• Maybe add a suffragette voice over in the black and white scenes make the genre more known.